Françoiz Breut
Kilometre eighty-three ... On a French road that is a small stone at the verge, white with a red cap, a number painted on it, and nothing else ... You pass a thousand of them and remember none ... The title of this song is one of those stones ... which means somebody stopped there, or something happened there, and the stone is the only witness that stayed ...
The words were written by Dominique A, the most literary songwriter in French pop, who has written for Françoiz Breut since the beginning, and the tune is hers ... It is from Une saison volée — A Stolen Season — her third record, from 2005, on the label Tôt ou tard ... It was the single ... For that album she asked songwriters from all over to write for her and kept only the singing for herself, and the record wanders through English, Spanish, and Italian as well as French, like a road trip with the radio on ...
She recorded it in Brussels in the summer of 2005 with a small band ... Boris Gronemberger on guitar, Luc Rambaud on keyboards, Sacha Toorop on drums, Dominique Brusson producing ... three players and a voice, which is the size of a car ... Breut draws pictures when she is not singing, and she sings the way she draws, in clear lines, with the detail left to do the work ...
The measure of it is the trio ... guitar, keys, drums, and a road song's plain engine under a voice that tells rather than sells ... Kilometre eighty-three ... Whatever happened there, she is the one who noticed the stone ...